Matt Druery
Matt Druery was a beautiful discovery. I love the fact his music is influenced by the 70s and the 80s. He has a great voice but not only. He’s also a great musician and an amazing performer. The first live video I ever watched of him was his performance of “Set Me Free” and I immediately loved the song. Even though the songs sound great in studio, I believe he’s someone you have to see live.
Today he’s releasing his new EP Set Me Free and I am honored to get to featured a project like this on my blog. It is fun, uplifting, nostalgic and memorable. It feels timeless. Congrats Matt on this new project !!
Set Me Free is now available worldwide.
Introduce yourself - what's your story?
I’m a 22 year old singer/songwriter from Sydney, Australia, born into a musical family, and have been playing & writing music as long as I can remember!
What did you grow up listening to?
Being obsessed with the CD collection of my parents, featuring mainly a lot of great music from the 1970s & 80s, all of these influences are very prevalent in the music I make now. For example, James Taylor, The Eagles, Steely Dan, Toto, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Bonnie Raitt, Hall & Oates, Rufus & Chaka Khan are just some of the artists I grew up listening to. From these early influences, I then ventured out and slowly discovered some of my own favourites as well, like Prince, Todd Rundgren, Elvis Costello & so many more. I think there are both subtle & obvious references to all of these artists in my own music!
When did you know you could sing?
I don’t think there was ever a moment I thought I could sing. It was more of a gradual progression of singing along to all the music I loved, which then lead to learning these songs on piano & singing them in my room at home, then starting to write my own songs & singing them, to then getting a band together and going out performing at venues around Sydney. I definitely think of myself as more of a songwriter first, who happens to sing as well!
Growing up, what were your favorite songs to sing along to?
What a tough question! Elton John was my first real musical hero - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was the first CD I bought as a kid, and 'Bennie & The Jets’ was one of favourite songs growing up. I remember playing piano & singing that song in primary school in Year 4 or 5, with all these kids looking at me thinking ‘what on earth this guy doing?’. In retrospect, I can see how a 9-year old singing 'Bennie & The Jets' at school assembly is a funny scenario. Starting my proper musical training as a piano player, Billy Joel was another favourite growing up, so I’d play & sing songs like ‘Just The Way You Are’ & ‘Honesty’ all the time too.
When did you decide to become an artist and release your original music?
I’d been writing and recording demos of new songs at home for years, but I didn’t really start recording & producing my own music with the intention of releasing in late 2017-2018, and even then I hadn’t yet figured out exactly how I wanted to release it at that point. Long story short, I was travelling Japan in early 2019 with some friends and we stayed for a few days at a great skiing resort near Sapporo, but I’m a horrifically bad skier, so I left my friends to go out on the slopes and ski each day, while I’d go to the hotel bar/lounge to hang out and do some work. One of these days, I just thought to myself ‘why not just bite the bullet & put one of the songs out? I need do to it sooner or later - just do it!’, so I spent those days in the hotel bar planning my first single release, which ended up being ’There 4 U’ in April 2019. It also helped that there was complimentary Prosecco in the bar.
How would you define Matt Druery, the artist?
I guess it’s an amalgamation of a big range of influences. from 70s Bowie-esque art rock to Jimmy Webb's almost showtune-like storytelling, to the efficient & direct songwriting of The Eagles to the complex & dense arranging of Toto & Steely Dan. Basically, I try to resist having to confine my music to a specific genre with each release, finding excitement and challenge in making each song I put out different from the last. The main link between all my songs is that they all have a strong retro/70s & 80s flavour to them, but besides that, I write & record whatever keeps me excited at the time!
You've just released your new EP Set Me Free - how does it feel like to release this new project?
It’s very exciting to finally put this EP out, seeing as I’ve been sitting on it for nearly a year! We recorded the majority of the rhythm tracks in early 2019, with overdubs up until mid-2020, mixed & mastered by August, so it feels really good to have it out in the world very soon. I’ve been drip-feeding this EP by releasing a song from it each month since November, wanting to give each track its own time to shine before releasing the full EP, so it’s a great feeling to now be presenting it as a whole work as originally intended.
Could you describe the songwriting/production process for this project? Who helped you create it?
Whenever it comes time to working on a new project (what I intend to become a new EP or a larger work), I usually start by focusing on a genre or vibe that I want to dive into, and for this EP it was 1970s rock/country-rock, particularly channeling Neil Young, Eagles, Elvis Costello & Bryan Adams, to name a few. I then go into my bank of unreleased songs I’ve written and see if any older songs I have will fit the vibe & feeling I’m going for. These older songs that ended up on the EP were ‘Ballad Of Mary Lou’ & ‘Come & Get Us’, as well as a very early version of ‘I Ain’t Cryin’ Over You’ which was originally titled ‘Give Me Some Time With You’. ’Take The Load Off Me’, ’Set Me Free’ & ‘It’s Me & You’ were all brand new songs written especially for the EP.
For all my recording work since 2018, I’ve worked with producer Sean Carey at Church St Studios in Sydney. My debut EP, Something New!, released in February 2020, featured me playing nearly all the instruments on every track excepts horns & some backing vocals, however for the forthcoming Set Me Free EP, I wanted to put a band together and record the basic tracks together to make it feel more live & loose. I was lucky enough to have master musicians Gordon Rytmeister on drums, Mark Costa on bass, and Dan Willington on guitar, tracking all the songs in 2 days in the big live room at Church St Studios.
We actually recorded about 8 songs in the 2 days, then Sean & I chose our 6 favourites and then added overdubs over the following few months, before bringing in Miranda Carey & Laura Stitt to sing backing vocals.
Sean & I spent a lot of time refining the mixes, going back and listening & refining further after having a few days off at a time, which was really beneficial to gain perspective and have time away from the project, not letting it become all-consuming and resist being obsessive.
Once we were happy, we sent it off to Kathy Naunton at dB Mastering to master it, and then we were done!
What different topics are you talking about on this project?
I think this Set Me Free EP is a lot more introspective and personal than Something New! was, which is encouraged by the more acoustic & stripped back sound of the EP. Whereas Something New! had several songs which we were sung to someone else & about someone else, this EP has more songs about me, disguised by singing them to another person, if that makes sense. For example, ’Take The Load Off Me’ & ‘It’s Me & You’ are probably two of the most personal and intimate songs I’ve written, and that’s also more apparent due to the more organic instrumentation, compared to the 1980s synth-pop production of my first EP. On the other hand, there’s definitely a couple moments on the EP where triumph, independence & overcoming are the core values, like on ’Set Me Free’ & ‘I Ain’t Cryin’ Over You’, so I think the more down & sadder songs on the EP end up balancing out nicely.
What did you feel when writing "Take The Load Off Me"?
I don’t actually remember the specific moment of writing that song or what inspired it, but I think everyone identifies with times when everything is just happening at once and nothing seems to be going how it was planned, and you just want a bit of a reset and time to reassess what’s happening around you. ‘A clown never cries until he rests his disguise’ is one of the sadder lines that I’ve written in a song, but it’s a relatable feeling of no one knowing or understanding how you're really feeling inside at a given time, and trying to keep life moving while dealing with your own things.
What was the hardest part about making this EP?
I often have a crisis somewhere in the mixing stage of a song where I think it’s all crap and want to throw it out and do something else, and that definitely happened a couple of times during this EP. You can spend so much time on a song and lose perspective of what you were really trying to achieve with it in the first place, so I’d say the hardest part of this EP was trying to keep my own overthinking to the back of my head, and trusting in my initial instinct of the EP’s direction. After all, it’s just music - it’s meant to be fun & liberating at its core, and if it ends up being an expression & an extension of you as a result, then that’s a bonus!
Any favorite memories from the making of this project?
It was a real privilege & joy to be in the studio playing with Gordo, Mark & Dan for the tracking sessions with Sean at the helm. I’d played with them live before, but it was our first time in the studio together, and it was a truly creative & inspired couple of days - bouncing ideas off each other, coming up with parts in real time, making changes to the songs on the fly, finding new ways to play a certain section of a song… and all of it being such fun & lively, not-at-all wearying or tiring. Not to mention that they’re all world-class musicians!
What made you want to name your EP Set Me Free?
The song ’Set Me Free’ was the first of the new songs I’d written especially for the EP, and it became the song that really got me most excited about what the EP would become and what direction to take it in. Amongst the band, Sean & I, it also felt like it represented both musically & lyrically the concept of the whole project. It was firmly in the 1970s-rock world with big drums and searing guitar solos, while hinting at the more personal nature of the lyrics, as well as it being a catching & powerful three word title, so it felt fitting.
What's your goal for this new EP?
I’m not sure I have a goal, per say - I’m really just happy if people happen to listen to it and like a couple songs! On a personal note, each EP or song I release, I tick off a bit of a mental list of things I want to do musically. Like Something New! is my 80s synth-pop moment (even though a lot of my stuff is in that vain!), the single I’ll Change is a tribute to my favourite Motown jams, and then Set Me Free is my Laurel Canyon/Troubadour moment. I’m not sure what’s next beyond this release, but it’ll definitely be different once again.
What are your thoughts on today's music industry? If you could change one thing, what would it be?
This may be a bit of an unpopular opinion, but it seems like there’s a movement from many musicians at the moment saying 'people don’t want to see live music’ or 'people don’t go and see live music anymore’. This annoys me a bit, as it seems to put the duty on the audience to go out and see things, whereas I think the duty is on the performance/entertainer to create something original & unique that audiences can’t not go and see. All of the great musicians I love who played live, like Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Elton John etc. - they all worked hard to write great songs early on in their career, and they all put on great live shows, whether they had a whole lighting & stage set up or just a grand piano & a spotlight in a 200-seat club. It was them and their artistry which people came out to see, and they each worked tirelessly to create an undeniably entertaining show for their audience. It’s true that in the 21st century, the internet & social media and knowing how to market yourself plays a bigger part in one’s own career than it ever has, but I really do believe that the quality of an artist’s act and their musical output is enough to drive audience interest and growth. To use the old adage, nothing is more powerful than the word of mouth, and I strongly believe this in the context of live performance, as well. A lot of musicians aren’t challenging themselves enough to make something truly unique & different from what other musicians are already doing, and in some cases, doing it at a lesser quality than what’s already out there, and then claim it’s a lack of live music interest, which I think is a bad stance to take on the situation, and not prone to improvement. But that’s just my opinion!
What biggest life lessons have you learned so far?
To always be open to new experiences. To try to never have an expectation of how a certain event or moment will play out. I love the Theodore Roosevelt quote, “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…”. In my own life, I’ve found that the harder something was to achieve, the greater feeling & pride I felt once reaching the other side.
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